Roman Catholicism

“ Perhaps the most winsome and Christ-like figure that Roman Catholicism presents, the loveliest flower in her rich garden of sainthood, is the poverty-loving, utterly lowly and loving, care-free and joyous Francis of Assisi, and perhaps, too, it may be said that no Christian character better deserves the study of Protestants. ”

“ But it may be doubted whether such a policy is possible. The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the Ultramontanes. They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other fate in store for the soma of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without taint to those who are born of the Spirit. ”

“ Thus we see that Roman Catholicism is more zealous, more enthusiastic, more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other part of the world. ”

“ I do not say that he is the founder of the Roman Catholic Church, for that is another question. Roman Catholicism, as a polity, or government, or institution, is one thing; and Roman Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although they have been often confounded. As a government, or polity, it is peculiar,--the result of the experience of ages, adapted to society and nations in a certain state of progress or development, with evils and corruptions, of course, like all other human institutions. ”

“ The American Roman Catholic has been surrounded by intelligence and a free, pure, Christian society. These two things have so operated upon American Roman Catholicism as to greatly reform it and almost radically change it, while they did not antagonize it in a spirit of rancor. How wonderful the revolution! ”

“ Roman Catholicism, however, must be losing ground fast, as the people increase in knowledge and desire to be free from clerical yoke; and it is astonishing to what an extent Protestantism, everywhere tolerated now, prevails in countries formerly so pope and priest ridden. ”

“ Devotion in Roman Catholicism is totally distinct in its essence from that of Protestantism. The devotion of Protestants is scriptural and reasonable; that of Roman Catholics poetical and affectionate. The Protestant considers God as a spiritual being, and, as such, incomprehensible, the only object of worship, the only p. 103fountain of grace and pardon. The Roman Catholic represents the Eternal in material forms, accessible only through the indirect medium of intercession, and addresses him with the familiarity and tenderness peculiar to the human relations between a father and a son. ”

“ The additional qualification of “Roman” she tolerates, since it proclaims her doctrine of the see of Rome as the keystone of Catholicism; but to herself she is “the Catholic Church,” and her members are “Catholics.”
Yet to concede this claim and surrender without qualification the word “Catholic” to a connotation which is at best only universal in theory, is to beg several very weighty questions. The doctrine of the Catholic Church, i.e. the essential unity and interdependence of “all God’s faithful people scattered throughout the world,” is common to all sections of Christians. ”

“ Root, stem, and branch, it is hostile to the Word of God, and, as every such system must do, darkened the consciences of men. We may not forget, however, its essential religious and scholastic services in earlier years, nor that it has nurtured some of the saints among the centuries. Catholicism has a basis of Christianity, and, could the excrescences be hewn away, and this foundation be again discovered, then for Roman Catholicism would dawn a new and greater era. ”

“ On the other hand, Roman Catholicism maintains its place against the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency in forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed legibleness; but not without the unfailing aid and support of a spirit of faith and worship which produces a devoted priesthood and hosts of genuine saints. ”

“ While the Romans converted one soul to Catholicism, the inheritors of the Oxford Movement were converting twenty. Catholicism must be accounted a disposition of mind, an attitude toward life that did not necessarily imply all that was implied by Roman Catholicism. ”

“ But many of its leaders have been among the glories of the Church of England, and I could never speak of them with disrespect.
Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican, stands to lose heavily by the decay of institutionalism as an article of faith. It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally. The Christian virtues, so far as we can see, flower impartially in the souls of Catholic and Protestant, of Churchman and Schismatic, of Orthodox and Heretic. ”

“ But you went further: you believed that Roman Catholicism was not Christianity; ”

“ The Central Empires represented Roman Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Let them unite. ”

“ The Catholic Church is to-day more zealous, more compact, more united, more confident of herself, more energetic, and better organized, than she was at the commencement of 1871. The Roman Catholics have good reason to be thankful that their church has gained in faith, in the spirit of sacrifice and prayer, in devoutness in worship, and in all Christian virtues. ”

“ These waverers, these men who lack force of character, whose hearts are charged with diluted Catholicism, know and believe, and by listening to sermons and religious instructions can completely convince themselves, that the Catholic Church is divine in her origin, holy in her founder, infallible in her doctrines, apostolic in her organization, glorious and wonderful in her saints. ”

“ The tremendous strength of the Roman Catholic Church lies in its fidelity to principle, in its religious vitality, and in its hatred of compromise. It should be an object-lesson to all Protestant ministers. ”

“ A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'—not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it—not a body, however small, representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. ”

“ The traditions in the long run have made the papacy; they are its chief support to-day. To accept them bodily, in mass, is to appeal to actual Christendom—to the historic church—as to a standard and law, and not as to a witness of truth. It is to acknowledge the identity of Christian truth and the Christian Church visible. This brings us again to Romanism, or this is the postulate of the Roman Catholic apologist. ”

“ Now this epistle containing this doctrine was written by Paul to the Church at Rome, and which these modern people called Roman Catholics profess to be members of. If they are what they profess to be, every one of them have been buried with Christ in baptism, and have risen again to newness of life. ”

“ The church is the purest, most perfect, and most enlightened revelation of the divine Being, and none other understands what is worship. From a religious stand-point the Catholicism of the Latin peoples is the best, the most rational, and the most perfect. Rome, in spite of her repeated and frightful falls, remains the only legitimate church. ”

“ It is a truth received by all Catholics, as Toumely, a French divine, who writes against the infallibility of the Holy See, expresses it, " That as the Roman and apostolical See is the bond of Catholic unity and of Catholic communion, no man can be held to be a Catholic, unless he be joined with that See in the unity of Faith and doctrine." ”

“ God is a wall of fire round about her, and her glory in the midst of her. The Roman Church is made glorious by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by spiritual might and force, by truth, grace, and sanctity. These same divine gifts and powers pervade the whole Catholic Church by virtue of communion with the See of the Vicar of Christ. The burning light of faith, the burning fire of charity, are concentrated within, and diffused all around the Catholic Church, constituting all her glory and all her power, and by these she illumines and inflames the whole world. ”

“ Do Protestants believe this divine fact?
"Reason, it is true," says the Roman Catechism, "and the senses, are compelled to ascertain the existence of the Church, that is, of a society of men devoted and consecrated to Jesus Christ; no faith is necessary to understand a truth which is acknowledged by Jews and Turks; but do Protestants believe the privileges and dignity of the Church as Catholics believe them? By no means, because they have not the light of faith, which alone enables us to say I believe the Catholic Church." ”

“ The preacher continues:
"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women." ”

“ We have shown throughout our articles that in every question which the human mind raises, there is no possible alternative—either embrace the Catholic solution, so coherent with reason; or the pantheistic solution, and the death of the intelligence. Now, when we speak of the Catholic solution, we mean of the solution which is given by the church whose head is the Bishop of Rome, for no other pretended Catholic Church gives all the true solutions.
Second, because it is the Roman Catholic Church alone which knows her own essence and attributes. ”

“ To complete the harmony of this most desired unity, it remains for Us to address all those throughout the world whose salvation has long been the object of Our thoughts and watchful cares; We mean Catholics, whom the profession of the Roman faith, while it renders them obedient to the Apostolic See, preserves in union with Jesus Christ There is no need to exhort them to true and holy unity, since through the divine goodness they already possess it ”

“ There should therefore be no difficulty in distinguishing between the official policy of the Roman See—which has been almost uniformly odious—and the history of the Christian religion in the Latin countries, which has added new lustre to human nature. The Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful and precious kind of human excellence. ”

“ Catholics hold that Protestants who have these dispositions, and who have no suspicion of their religion being false, and no means to discover, or fail in their honest endeavors to discover, the true religion, and who are so disposed in their heart that they would at any cost embrace the Roman Catholic Religion if they knew it to be the true one, are Catholics in spirit and in some sense within the Catholic Church, without themselves knowing it. ”

“ The Roman Catholic part of our population are seemingly content as they are, in their peaceful and quiet homes, where, with their wives and children around them, they are secured by Protestant laws in the right to worship God unmolested and according to their own consciences, as well as in their pursuit after happiness and prosperity. ”

“ Supposing that the question of the Procession could be resolved by explanations on their part, there would only remain the authority of the Roman See to be admitted by them. {263} You again have retained much more than the Lutherans and Calvinists. What you have of good is ours, is Catholic. If persons among you believe in God, believe in the Redemption, lead a holy life, bring forth good works, I do not deny that all this is Catholic in them; if they are ignorant as to the sin of schism or heresy, this, which is good in them, may be sufficient for their salvation. ”

“ If they receive you not, says the Lord unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself the kingdom of God.
But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. ”

“ The Roman Catholic faith is the established form of religion, and the priesthood possesses considerable wealth and power, although the dominant influence once possessed has been curtailed of recent years. ”

“ Light and wisdom from above soon illuminated the soul that surrendered itself a willing victim before the altar of eternal truth. She was led by a divine hand, through paths she knew not, to a temple of which she had scarcely heard, and, while still living among those to whom the Catholic religion was entirely unknown, entered its portals to find herself—scarcely less to her own astonishment than to the amazement and horror of her devoted parents—a Catholic, as firmly established and steadfastly resolved as if she had been born and educated in the faith! ”